Pages

How to Master Your Kitchen

For the third installment of How to Master Your Kitchen, I am sharing a favorite pot of mine, the classic dutch oven. A Dutch oven is a very heavy duty pot that retains heat and conduct heat more effectively. Dutch ovens are heavier than your normal sauce pans and are a great cooking vessel for braises, stews, pot roasts and slow-simmered soups. Dutch ovens can also be known as cast iron, and they be cooking on the stove top and then transferred into the oven to finish cooking, just remember to use oven mitts to remove the Dutch oven.
If a recipe calls for browning your beef or pork, a Dutch oven is the best cooking pot to use.

This very useful pot is good for frying foods in because the sides are very tall and will keep the oil an even temperature.
When choosing a Dutch oven, it is better if it is enamel coated because the coating will last a lifetime and you don't have to preseason your Dutch oven before each cooking.

I recently made a pot roast, it was Pioneer Woman Cooks recipe, in my Dutch oven and the results were amazing. I also heard that there is an overnight bread recipe that calls to be cooked in the Dutch oven, I need to try that recipe.
My Dutch oven is part of the Martha Stewart collection and ever since my mom got this for me one Christmas, I am constantly using this pot. Some Dutch ovens, the top of the line, like Le Creuset will set you back a few hundred dollars but you can find some reasonably priced Dutch ovens.
Thank you all for commenting on this series, your comments encourage me and excite me for each installments in this series. If you have a favorite tool let me know, I would love to feature it or if you have any suggestions, talk to me.
The two previous installments of this series are a zester and a food processor.

I LOVE my dutch oven. I don't know what I'd do without it!! I have that red one in the picture at the top. I actually store it just sitting on the stove top because I love looking at it all the time :)

I think I may have gotten one of these as a wedding present, but I'm not sure since all our gifts have been stored in my parents garage for the past year. I guess I'll find out when we move into our new house and open all our stuff!

This is great! Do more! I love cooking and I don't have a Dutch oven, but I have also only really associated it with roasts. I wasn't clear on what else I could use it for and since a roast isn't really in our budget, I was on the edge on how much I'd really need one. Maybe I will start saving my pennies!